


All or Nothing

by In_agony_and_ecstasy



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Domestic, Alternate Universe - High School, Anal Sex, Body Dysphoria, Break Up, Closure, Coming Out, Declarations Of Love, Edging, Explicit Sexual Content, Fingering, Heartbreak, Homophobia, M/M, Makeup, Makeup Sex, Oral Sex, Past EreJean, Pegging, Religion, Reunions, Self-Acceptance, Self-Love, Shower Sex, Tolerance, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, bartending, finding closure, in the closet, kind of, self-respect, strap-on sex, trans!eren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 18:19:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3701809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/In_agony_and_ecstasy/pseuds/In_agony_and_ecstasy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren has come a long way since transitioning. He's had his top surgery and is taking hormone therapy. He's created a life for himself, despite being unable to go to school or move away from Texas because of the expenses of being trans. Still, he's mostly happy working as a bartender with some of his closest friends.</p><p>That is, until a man he hasn't seen in five years walks through the bar door one night. It's Jean, the same boy who broke his heart in high school and never spoke to him again after Eren finally gained the courage to come out to him about his gender identity.</p><p>It's either the strangest coincidence, or an absurd miracle plotted by fate, Eren thinks, because certainly Jean couldn't have meant to see him again after so long?</p>
            </blockquote>





	All or Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday Jean.

The fact that I had bumped into him was unlikely to begin with. Since I last saw him, five years had passed and I had moved from my own quiet town to San Antonio, one of the biggest cities in Texas.

That alone was enough absurd coincidence to brand a miracle. But on top of this, I wasn’t even supposed to be working tonight, and the person whose shift I had taken, had originally taken the shift of the person who _was_ supposed to be working. Reiner had called in sick, and he’d called Armin to be his replacement for the night. Armin had gotten halfway to work when his car fizzled out in the middle of the road, and he had had to call me because somebody had to close the damn bar tonight.

He had seated himself at the stool with a short, black man with hair buzzed so close to his head it looked like a shadow. They were secluded in the corner of the bar, closer to the sink where dirty dishes were placed. The lamps hanging along the length of the bar didn’t quite extend down to the very end, so the lighting above them was dim. But I knew it was him, and I had a feeling I would have known it was him even in the dark. I had been waiting to feel that stride thump against the floor, smell that mint shampoo, hear that sigh leave his throat, and those knuckles tap the way they always did against whatever surface he was leaning against. I would have known no matter what.

I didn’t know the man he was with however, and at first I felt a pang of jealousy. His friend appeared to be there to comfort him. He spoke too often, with an expression that was always either worried or confused, and whenever Jean hadn’t spoken in a while, he patted him on the back, and Jean would give a nod. I wished I could be in that man’s place. I would do it so much better than him.

When his friend ordered a drink – probably a half hour after they came in – I didn’t serve him the first time. I was too nervous, and it was still early enough in the night that I had a number of other people working beside me and plenty of other customers to help me avoid him.

It didn’t end up being difficult to do. Jean wasn’t drinking, as far as I could tell, and his friend had only had a few beers in the course of the three hours. If it wasn’t Jean, and it was just two strangers, I might not have even noticed their presence.

Around midnight, I was the only bartender left. It was late enough that I started going through the closing routine, but not late enough to kick people out. I was sweeping behind the bar when Jean’s friend called me over.

“Hey, you,” he yelled, even though I was a max of ten feet away and all the TVs and overhead music had been shut off for the night.

“Jesus, Connie,” Jean snapped. I felt another pang in my chest. Even his voice was the same. I had tried not to look too closely at him, and given the lighting, it should’ve been easy. But my eyes were stuck on him the moment he walked in. Stuck on how his knuckles parted the blond strands of his undercut. Stuck on how his soft lips – the only soft feature of an otherwise sharp face – parted to take a sip of his water. Stuck on how his eyebrows furrowed, whether he was grinning or frowning, grimacing or sneering. It was always there, creating a crease between his eyebrows, and I could remember that the only time his face ever relaxed was when he let his guard down. Usually, in order for that to happen he had to be asleep.

But every once in a while, if I put just the right words in just the right order, and said it in just the right tone, I’d force that stone face to smile and it would make my chest swell with pride in a way that few other things could do.

None of that was what I noticed first though. Someone else in the world probably had those cheekbones, and those lips, and that stubble, and that crease in his forehead. Not all of it at once, I was sure, but he must have shared some of it with some others.

What I noticed first were his eyes. His eyes were technically hazel, but looking into them was like looking at candlelight, looking at early morning sunshine filtering through curtains, and I always knew that Jean had to be the only one in the world with those eyes because he was the only person in the world with a mind intense enough to make them look like that. His gaze always made the whole room darken. All the corners in my periphery blurred and surrounded him, turning the bar into a tunnel. Unlike most people, Jean’s eyes were not windows to his soul. They were veiled, and deep and I found myself drowning in them trying to find anything he was thinking in them.

What I noticed first, was that when his eyes met mine, he looked into my own green eyes – and I was not stupid, my eyes were a signature of their own, turquois and vibrant – he didn’t see _me_ the way I saw _him_. He was the man I had loved, and me? Was I a stranger? I had no idea.

“Hey!” his friend, Connie apparently, called again.

I shook my head, to clear it, and then strode to the end of the bar. I could feel Jean staring at me, but not examining me, the way I had him. He wasn’t looking for any remaining evidence from our younger days. He didn’t see the fingerprints he’d left all over me.

“Can I get you something?” I asked. I hoped I wasn’t glaring at the poor guy. It was just so hard not to let my eyes roam to the right.

“’Nother beer,” he said.

“Sure,” I replied, reaching for his glass and turning around.

“Do you know me from somewhere?” Jean asked. I halted mid-step, and swiveled around to face him.

I could lie, but I felt like fate might get mad at me for completely dismissing the miracle it had provided me with. But if I told the truth, would he believe it?

If I told him that I did know him from high school, and that we had spent dozens of nights sneaking into each other’s rooms through our windows, playing videogames, doing homework, kissing, undressing, touching, moaning – telling secrets, would he believe me? Would he believe me when I told him that the secret I gave him, the one that he had kept so securely inside of him that he refused to even acknowledge it himself, refused to believe, hadn’t gone away?

I couldn’t respond to him. He looked me in the eyes, so intense and so thoroughly that I knew he was turning my soul over in his mind like he might a smoothed-over, beach rock. He looked at me in a way that told me he already knew the answer to his own question, and he was testing me.

Why had he phrased it like that? Why had he asked if _I_ knew him, as if to make it clear that it was my responsibility to remember, not his. As if he was the one that was supposed to be known, not me. I was supposed to be forgotten.

…

The summer heat was thick, even at one am. It was sinking into Jean’s room through his windows. His bedroom was in the basement, and still it helped nothing. The only relief we had was the fan sitting on his nightstand, buzzing at its highest level and rotating back and forth, so that the pathetic breeze could bump our toes, and scoot back up to nudge our ears.

We were in his damp sheets. Not from anything intimate this time. Jean had cleaned them earlier and they hadn’t quite dried. They were damp with sweat too. It gave my burning skin the slightest relief.

Jean was facing me, laying on his side, with one arm tucked beneath his pillow and one hand on my waist. We were both entirely naked, but since we’d been dating for two years and had done this many times, it wasn’t the rush it used to be. Now it was no different than being in my bed naked alone, and somehow, I preferred the familiarity to the spine-tingling newness of first touches.

Jean’s eyes were droopy. Both of us were fighting sleep, because falling asleep right now would officially bring us one day closer to the end of summer, one day closer to the stress of school and the responsibilities of our senior year. Both of us had swerved around the topic of college applications and who was going where and who was following who. He was going to school for English, which he could do anywhere, but wouldn’t leave home I knew. I was going to school for Spanish, which I could do anywhere, but also something I could especially do in Not-Texas.

Jean’s fingers trailed up and down my arm. He played with my hair, flicking it over my shoulder so that he could place his hand on my neck. He leaned in to kiss my neck, my shoulder, my breast, and my rib cage. His fingers threaded through my hair again, behind my back, and he played with the ends.

“I know I don’t say it enough,” he said, “I know I suck at this.”

His eyes glanced away from me, toward the darkness of his closet across the bed from us.

“But you’re really pretty.”

Actually, he did say it enough. He said it too much. He’d only said it two or three times since we’d been dating, but it was too fucking much.

“No, I’m not,” I spit.

His brow furrowed, confused more than angry that I had turned down his compliment. “Of course you are. You’re beautiful. Everyone thinks so.”

That made me flinch, and his eyes widened as he realized what that could imply. He sprung into a sitting positon and looked down at me.

“That’s not what I meant, Eren. I don’t – I didn’t mean you’re pretty just ‘cause everyone thinks so.”

I sat up, holding the blanket against my chest because I couldn’t even bear to see my body at that moment.

“Don’t call me that. Don’t call me _pretty_ , or _cute_ , or _beautiful_ or any of those things.”

__His fingers curled in the sheets and his head turned away from me again. His jaw clenched, and I knew he was trying to control his temper. I exhaled through my nose, trying to control my own._ _

__But he didn’t understand that I didn’t want to hear that he thought I was pretty, let alone that everyone else thought so. People told me at school all the time, and guys hit on me all the time, and my parents made jokes about it all the time. They had the two prettiest girls in school. My adopted sister, Mikasa, and me._ _

I hated it. I hated it every time someone called me that, and part of what I loved about Jean was that he _wasn’t_ like that. He didn’t buy me roses, or jewelry, or take me to chick-flicks or romances. He didn’t insist on paying for the whole bill when we went out to eat and didn’t open doors for me and didn’t ask me to prom by spelling it out in fireworks or some other cringe-worthy way. 

__“Why can’t I call you that?”_ _

__I could tell he was trying to make his voice sound tough, angry, but I hadn’t missed the undertone of hurt._ _

__This was another opportunity. I’d had dozens of them, and had turned them all down in favor of keeping my secret, and keeping him._ _

__When Jean finally returned my gaze, I realized one overwhelming truth._ _

__I loved Jean more than I had ever loved anyone, but it wasn’t enough. I hated my body more than Jean loved it, and he couldn’t stop me from changing it any longer, not even if it meant losing him._ _

__“I have to tell you something,” I whispered._ _

__His face crumpled up in a way that he only ever let happen with the lights off, and he choked, “You’re breaking up with me?”_ _

__I almost smiled, then shook my head. “What if I told you that I wasn’t a girl?”_ _

__His squinted at me, like he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten here. “But you are.”_ _

__“No, I’m not.”_ _

__“What are you talking about?”_ _

__And I told him everything. I told him that I was never a girl at all. I told him how living in this body was a never-ending nightmare. I told him that I wanted to take hormone therapy. I wanted to change my birth certificate. I wanted to have the surgeries. I wanted to move out of this Godforsaken state, go to school somewhere else, and surround myself with people who wouldn’t be able to compare me to how I used to be, wouldn’t know any differently, wouldn’t know anything at all._ _

__Just before I was out of breath and out of tears for the night, I told him that he could come with – or not – but I was going either way._ _

__Jean didn’t yell, like I thought he might. He didn’t cry either, which I had thought was just as likely._ _

__No, he did something far worse. He looked at me like I was a stranger, and backed out of the bed as though he thought he might catch my disease._ _

__“You’re not.”_ _

__“I am.”_ _

__“You are _not_ a boy, Eren.”_ _

__“I am.”_ _

__He kept shaking his head, and then he was pacing his room, tugging on his hair. He got dressed, pulling his shirt on inside-out and then ripping it off again to fix it. Pulling his boxers on, and almost tipping over and hurting himself. When I stood to grab his sweatpants for him, he said, “Don’t. Don’t touch my shit.”_ _

__I dropped the pants that I’d picked up._ _

__“What the hell? Why? Why are you doing this?”_ _

__I didn’t respond. I started grabbing my own clothes. First my underwear, then my bra, my tank-top and shorts, all while he stared at me like I was a black widow he’d carefully have to scoop up with a dustpan and toss out the window._ _

“Everything was fine. It was _fine_. I can’t – why would you…? What the hell?” His voice had never been so thick with emotion before, and I thought I had hurt him worse than if I _had_ just broken up with him. Why had I even dated him? Why had I even humored the idea of someone loving me? 

__When we were both dressed, I clutched on to myself, gripping too tightly on to my own arms. He looked me up and down, his face pained like I was a work of art that had been vandalized. “Just – just go.”_ _

__I climbed out his window and ran all the way home under the stars in my flip-flops, even when my toes were so scuffed up, and my heels were so blistered, that my feet began to bleed._ _

__…_ _

__I had been staring at him for too long to pretend I didn’t know him. Minutes had passed, and his eyes hadn’t wavered. He’d held my gaze the whole time. His friend kept glancing back and forth between us, each time his expression becoming more worried than it was before._ _

__“Jean,” I breathed, finally._ _

__His face softened then, and he cleared his throat. “I know you too, but I don’t know your name.”_ _

__My lungs deflated, and I pressed a hand against my chest, because for a moment there, I was certain my heart had given out entirely. Connie said something under his breath. Jean elbowed Connie as he took a sip of his beer, and he gagged on it. A sheepish grin poked at the corners of Jean’s mouth. He knew what he’d just done to me. That meant –_ _

__He knew my name. There was no way he could remember me, but forget my name. He assumed that I had changed my name since he had seen me last, because everything else had changed too. My brown hair no longer reached my back. My face was no longer smooth. My chest no longer had breasts. My body was no longer so slender, or soft._ _

__I had stubble. I had broadened shoulders, and sculpted pecks outlined by jagged scars._ _

__“Still Eren,” I told him. “I uh…didn’t change that.” My voice sounded low, surely lower than it had been this morning. I placed my hand against my throat. No Adam’s apple. The only feature missing, and the only thing that ever tipped anyone off._ _

__Jean’s eyebrows rose. “Why not?”_ _

__I shrugged. “I didn’t hate my name.”_ _

__“I’m just gonna…go,” Connie said, standing from his chair. Jean didn’t even turn his head to acknowledge it. “Are you coming with?”_ _

__Jean looked at me more meaningfully, and I realized he was giving me the option for him to stay, or for him to go with Connie. My heart jumped in my chest. He wanted to talk to me, but he knew that I might not want to talk to him, and he was respecting that._ _

__But he didn’t need to, because there was nothing more I wanted. Ever since I started working here, and even at other jobs before this, not a shift had gone by where I hadn’t imagined him walking through the front door, and wondering what it would be like._ _

__I couldn’t say I had ever imagined it happening like this, but the point was, it had happened._ _

__I shook my head at Connie._ _

__“I’ll get a cab,” Jean said to him, still keeping his eyes on me._ _

__His friend smiled and threw a twenty down on the counter to pay for his beers. I picked it up and tucked it into my pocket to put away later._ _

__“Are you sober enough?” I asked him._ _

__“I can walk.” As he stepped out the door, he grinned devilishly over his shoulder at me, “See ya’ soon, Eren.”_ _

__I quirked an eyebrow at him as he left, and Jean sighed. “Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s drunk.”_ _

__“Clearly,” I said, even though he’d only had three, maybe four beers, “You sure he’s okay to walk home?”_ _

__Jean nodded, pulling his phone out of his leather jacket pocket. “He lives a couple blocks away. I’ll text his girlfriend to pick him up.”_ _

__While Jean was on his phone, I started carrying all the glasses into the back kitchen area of the bar. The last few people who had been sitting in the booths cleared out, and it was just Jean and me. His eyes followed me to the door as I locked it up, and flicked off the neon, “open” sign. I gathered the mugs and shot glasses at the booths, as many as I could in one hand. Jean stood and gathered the rest._ _

__“You don’t have to –”_ _

__“It’s no big deal.” He shrugged, pinching four shot glasses in one hand. “You uh…aren’t gonna get in trouble for letting me stay after hours?”_ _

__I shook my head. “I’m a manager.”_ _

__Jean smiled at that. “How long have you been working here?”_ _

__I tilted my head back as I squeezed through the swinging door to get behind the bar, and then through the swinging doors to get to the kitchen. Jean followed. The doors clapped behind us. “Two years.”_ _

__“Since you turned twenty one,” he said._ _

__“You remember my birthday?” I asked, as I dropped the glasses in the dish soap water. The sink was piled high with the dishes. I always procrastinated them, because they were my least favorite part of closing up._ _

__“Of course I do.”_ _

__I started scrubbing each glass individually, and Jean took off his jacket. He tossed it on top of a nearby stack of barstools. He rolled up his sleeves, and I tried not to stare and the dusting of blond hair on his forearms, as the tendons went taught underneath his skin. I failed. I stared so hard._ _

__He dipped his arms in the water and pulled out a rag. He started washing the dishes by my side._ _

__“You look good. Handsome,” he said._ _

__I scrubbed the glass I was holding until it was cleaner than the day we’d unpackaged it, thinking about those words on his lips. I wanted to hear him say it again._ _

__“Didn’t think you’d like it.”_ _

__“Well, I do. You uh…you can’t even tell.”_ _

__I flinched._ _

__“I mean – I – I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean…if I didn’t, ya’ know, _know_ that you were a uh…”_ _

__I dropped the glass in the sink, and it clanked loudly against the medal bottom. Jean’s arms tensed._ _

__“That I was a girl?” I asked. “That the word you’re looking for?”_ _

__Jean clenched his jaw, and then bit his lip. I picked up the glass again. My hands turned pink and raw. Jean took the dish from my hand, and placed it on the drying rack on the counter top next to him. “No. It’s not. I swear. I just don’t know what word I’m supposed to use.”_ _

__“Assigned female at birth,” I muttered, “And for future reference, telling me you can’t tell I wasn’t born with a dick is not a compliment.”_ _

__He cleared his throat, and grabbed a new dish. “I’m sorry. I swear I didn’t come here to fuck this up.”_ _

__I pulled my hands out of the sink to turn and face him. “Wait you – what the fuck do you mean you didn’t come here to fuck it up?”_ _

__Jean smiled, and tried to hide his blush by looking away from me. He kept his eyes on the water. “Did you think it was an accident that I showed up?”_ _

__My hands trembled, and because I didn’t want him to see I gripped on to the edge of the sink. “It wasn’t?”_ _

__He shook his head. “No. I knew you worked here.”_ _

__“I wasn’t supposed to work tonight,” I told him._ _

__He shrugged. “I would have come back. Tomorrow. The day after. I would have asked a co-worker about your schedule, assuming they’d even tell me. It’s kinda stalker-ish, I’m sorry.”_ _

__We were quiet for a minute. I stopped doing the dishes altogether. So did Jean. He leaned against the countertop, staring at me in his periphery, waiting for me to say something._ _

__“Why the fuck are you here, Jean?”_ _

__“To see you.”_ _

“No. The whole story. Why, the fuck, are you here? Why don’t you want to fuck up shit _now_ after all this time?” 

__Jean sighed. I watched his chest fall and rise. His shirt hugged his chest in a way that kind of made me want to pray. I hated the way his jaw clenched and flexed like that when he was thinking and I was thinking about all the hurtful words that could escape that throat and all the feelings that set of lips could place on my skin._ _

__“Alright,” he said, setting the glass he had been rotating in his hands – his knuckles too big for his fingers, from cracking them, and dry from drawing with charcoal, I would bet – down on the drying rack, and then shoved his hands in his jean pockets. “Two weeks ago my boyfriend of a year broke up with me.”_ _

__Jean paused for a moment, perhaps to see if I’d gasp or hit him or something. I didn’t react, but not because I wasn’t stunned._ _

__“He broke up with me because he thought I was cheating on him. I wasn’t, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t love him anymore. And several months ago, I heard about someone I had been thinking about for a very long time…It was actually my mom who brought you up. I guess, someone asked the pastor at your mom’s church to read a prayer for you, and my mom still goes to the same church. She brought it up to me.”_ _

__I swallowed, and fidgeted where I stood. “A prayer?”_ _

__Jean stepped closer to me. “Not the kind of prayer you’re thinking.”_ _

__“What kind of prayer am I thinking?” I asked, the bitterness apparent in my throat._ _

__“Not a prayer asking you to be a girl. It was a prayer for your double mastectomy to go safely.”_ _

__Reflexively, I placed my hand against my chest, feeling the scar through my shirt. I was surprised my mom - I knew it was my mom who asked for the prayer, even if Jean was trying to protect me - had brought it up to our pastor again, after he had told them it was their obligation to “hate the sin, not the sinner”. Only once he’d said that to my parents, and they stopped ignoring me and welcomed me back into their life. I wondered if that prayer really had me in mind at all, or if it was just my mom displaying how much she deserved to go to heaven. My parents had loved the sinner, but not their son._ _

__Jean stepped closer again._ _

__“Did it go safely?”_ _

__I nodded. My chest had healed, other than the scars. “You didn’t come here to check up on my chest.”_ _

__“You’re right.”_ _

__“So, then…”_ _

__“I came here, because once I heard your name again, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I mean, you were always on my mind, but after hearing that you were…were going through with everything, I _really_ couldn’t stop. I wasn’t cheating on my boyfriend, but I might as well have been.” He placed his hand over mine, and pulled it away from my chest. When I didn’t immediately yank my hand away, he held on to it. “I wanted to see you. I wanted to say I was sorry.”_ _

__I pulled my hand away. He didn’t fight me on it. I started washing the dishing again. His hands dipped into the water, sloshing it around, as he grabbed on to the rag and a mug._ _

__“‘Sorry’ can’t make up for five years.”_ _

__And it wasn’t just five years. Sorry couldn’t make up for him completely ignoring me for our entire senior year. It couldn’t make up for him dating four girls that year, even though I had been his first relationship, and his first kiss, and his first time. Sorry couldn’t make up for him applying for college, and leaving his house to move into his dorm without even saying goodbye. It couldn’t make up for him never giving me his new phone number, never even adding me on Facebook, or stopping by to catch up any of the days he came home during the semester. Sorry couldn’t make up for being gone, while I put college off so I could work and pay for my hormone therapy, and save for my top surgery._ _

__Sorry couldn’t make up for him pretending I didn’t exist. I could forgive him for breaking up with me. I could forgive him for ending things badly. I could forgive him for so much, but he had abandoned me. He didn’t need to do that. He could have dated other people and been my friend. He could have talked to me still. During that time I had no one but Mikasa and Armin to support me, and both of them had gone off to college together while I stayed home. I was stuck with my parents, who were trying their best, but their version of the best that they could do was the fucking worst._ _

__I was completely alone because of him for years._ _

__“I know,” he replied. “I don’t just want to say sorry though.”_ _

__I sighed, stacking another dish on the drying rack. We were almost out of dishes. “Then what?”_ _

__“Anything, I guess. I want to do whatever I have to, to make up for it. I didn’t honestly expect ‘sorry’ to be enough.”_ _

__I dropped the glass I was holding on the floor. It smashed, and hundreds of pieces scattered across the tile, and dove underneath the fridge, freezer and shelves. I remembered the day I ran home from his house, the last time I’d ever spoken to him, and how bloody my feet had been._ _

__What could possibly make up for that? Could anything?_ _

__My hands were shaking._ _

__“Eren?” Jean asked. “Just say it. Go ahead. I can take it.”_ _

__“Just, fuck, Jean! Why did you do that to me! You…I was _all_ you had! Since we were little, I was your only friend. The only person who was as annoying and pissed off as you were, who could put up with your shit. I was always there for you. And you – I wasn’t asking you to love me. I wasn’t asking you to keep fucking me. I wasn’t asking you to be gay! I was just – just asking you to accept me and – and –”_ _

__I broke down sobbing, and then I picked up another dish and threw it across the room. It exploded against the wall. I shoved the tears off my face with my fist. This was all I needed. Jean came back, saw me as I was meant to be, what I had worked so hard for, and now that was ruined because I still wasn’t strong enough to not cry._ _

__Jean didn’t try to touch me. He didn’t say anything at first. He waited for me to compose myself, and despite hating him in that moment, I was grateful he hadn’t tried to comfort me. That would have just made it all worse._ _

__Jean cleared his throat. “Eren, I’ve known since I was eleven years old that I’m gay. Probably even earlier than that, I just can’t remember.”_ _

__I blinked at him, unable to even find my voice. My hands clutched on to the sink so that I wouldn’t fall. My legs felt weak._ _

__“And I was terrified. I know that’s not an excuse, but fuck, man. You know what it’s like. You know what it’s like to be something every day that you don’t want to be. I didn’t want to be gay, Eren. I didn’t want to do that to my mom. And you – you were the first ‘girl’ I ever liked. Like, _really_ liked. Not just pretending to like. And I thought ‘thank God, I don’t have to be gay. I don’t have to tell my mom I like guys.’”_ _

__I let go of the sink, and seeing how wobbly I still was, Jean placed his hand on the small of my back to steady me. I almost didn’t feel it. When I didn’t push him away, his whole hand pressed against my back, and I felt his gorgeous knuckles. Oh fuck, his knuckles. Of all the things for me to love about him, his knuckles would be the death of me._ _

“But then you…then you _were_ a guy. And when you said it, when you finally told me, it was so obvious I couldn’t believe I didn’t see it before. And I thought about how I should have known. I should have known without you having to tell me, because I was gay and I knew I was gay, and I had liked you anyway. It made so much sense.” 

__I whimpered, as he finally pulled me into his chest, and I clutched on to his too-tight and too-perfect-on-his-body shirt. He wrapped his arms around me, and then his knuckles were threading through my hair like they always used to, only this time they had a shorter distance to travel. He tucked a few strands behind my ear._ _

“I didn’t want to be gay, and when you told me you were a guy, and all the stuff you were going to do…I was so happy, _so_ happy. But I was more terrified than happy. I knew you would be braver than me. You’d come out and you’d get your surgeries and change everything you wanted to change, and I wouldn’t be able to keep up with you. I’d lose you. And I was fucking _terrified_.” 

__We were quiet for a second, letting his words hover between us. I savored the feeling of his fingertips against my head._ _

__Then, despite myself, I laughed._ _

__He jerked his head back to look at me. “What?”_ _

__“Bet you were pissed, too,” I mumbled, then sniffled. I shook my head. “’Cause it figures, right? You thought you were the shit falling for me. Thought you got out of being gay and then you find out I was a dude all along and you’ve been fucking a guy. Don’t even lie. You were pissed your own damn gayness tricked you.”_ _

__He snorted and hugged me closer to his chest. “Yeah, okay. I was pissed, too.”_ _

__“And you didn’t leave me because I was trans,” I whispered._ _

__“What?” he asked._ _

__“You didn’t leave me because you didn’t believe me, or because you thought I was crazy. That’s what I thought, ya’ know. I thought you had a problem with people like me.”_ _

__He shook his head. “No. I just wasn’t ready for you to be my boyfriend yet. I wanted it – you have no idea how bad I wanted it – but I couldn’t.”_ _

__I squeezed on to him until practically every inch of him was pressed against me. “You’re still not forgiven.”_ _

__He chuckled. “Have I made a dent?”_ _

__I hummed, pressing my head against his chest so I could hear his heartbeat. I smelled the tap water, mint shampoo and charcoal that had always been on his skin. In all this time, so little had changed about his appearance, and yet I knew that whatever was going on in his head now, it had changed. In five years he’d become a man just as I had, and I wanted to know him. I wanted to know the ways he thought now, and the things that had happened to him that made him the way he was. If I told myself I knew him, and that he was just Jean, just that boy that hurt me, I could never forgive him. But if I told myself I didn’t know him, that he was just a stranger, just a man who didn’t want to hurt me, what was there to forgive? “Maybe.”_ _

__“What else do I gotta do? I’ll do anything,” he told me._ _

__I pulled away from him, and then glanced at the clock hanging over the bar’s walk-in fridge. It was one am. Usually, I was long out of this place and on my way home. “Sweep up the glass.”_ _

__“Are you serious?” he asked._ _

__I nodded. “Sweep it up. I’m gonna mop the front room.”_ _

__Without another word, I left the backroom to fetch the broom and dustpan for him. When I handed it to him, he gave me another look of disbelief, but didn’t question it. In his Chuck Taylors, he carefully stepped around the broken glass, and began sweeping. I went into the storage closet, pulled out the mop, filled the bucket, and pushed through the doors to start mopping._ _

__Jean and I closed the bar together. We barely spoke at all, other than me telling him what stuff went where and what stuff needed to be cleaned and how. But we were magnetic, always coming in closer contact than we needed to when we passed each other, always unconsciously gravitating toward each other. I kept perking my head left or right to hear where he was in the bar, and somehow hearing him curse under his breath at one in the morning at the bar felt commonplace._ _

__When everything was officially in its place for the night, the front doors locked up and everything turned off, Jean and I headed out the back door._ _

__There was a moment of hesitation that stretched on, as we stood in the alley just behind the bar. My car was parked along the curb of the nearest road, just twenty feet away. I held my keys. Jean pulled on his leather jacket, even though it was mid-April and Texas had stopped being chilly in February. He reached into his jean pocket to grab his phone._ _

__I watched him do this, all while contemplating how much I was willing to forgive him tonight. How much I was willing to put behind me. This morning, although I hadn’t consciously thought about it, I had been as angry and bitter over this as I ever had been. The pain of the night I climbed out of his window and ran home had never left me. It was dormant in my bones._ _

__“You don’t have to,” Jean said. “If this was just about getting laid, I could have fucked anyone.”_ _

__And he probably could, I figured. Through most of high school, Jean had been scrawny and squeaky. He’d had braces, and acne that he tried to cover up with his undercut. Those were the years I had dated him. But once we broke up, as if the universe was trying to tell me whose side it was on, the puberty had melted right off of him and he – overnight it had seemed – had wiry, defined muscles instead of twiggy limbs, and a crooked, cocky grin, instead of just crooked teeth. In five years, his good looks had ripened, and I knew that if it wasn’t him, if he truly was a stranger, I’d be taking him home with me tonight._ _

__“Is this the last time I’m going to see you?” I asked. He leaned against the back door of the bar, still holding his phone, ready to call a cab. In the alley, there was just one lamp post above our heads. It was white, incandescent, so bright it was blinding and it was hard to make out his expression. His jaw was clenching though, that much I knew._ _

__“If you want it to be.”_ _

__“Are you fucking kidding me?!” I yelled, shoving him. He threw both his hands up in surrender._ _

__“What? Fuck, what’s wrong with that?”_ _

__“What’s wrong with that?! God, Jean! What the fuck do you think?! I spent years wondering if you even remembered my name, if anything we ever had meant anything at all, and then you walk in here tonight and I have to _think_ about you.”_ _

__I jabbed my finger into his chest, and his whole body jerked at the contact. I glared at him, bringing my face within an inch of his. I could smell the mint on his breath and feel the heat of his blush – from anger, or pain or desire I didn’t know._ _

__“Even though I’ve spent five years wishing I could _forget_ you, I had to actually look at you and fucking think about you. And then you give me all these reasons to stop being mad at you – which I never wanted by the way, I never wanted to stop being mad at you – and you act like you want me again, and now, what? You just don’t care if I don’t want you? You get some fucking balls after six years and come see me, and now you could just as easily never see me again? Why’d you even come?!”_ _

__Jean placed his hand against mine, where it was clutching his shirt, and he finger by finger pried my hand off of him. I watched his knuckles become sharp and slack with each motion. His jaw kept clenching, and he exhaled. I remembered what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to exhale, grip on to my hand, do _something_ to control my anger because Jean and I both knew that the two of us in each other’s path could raise hell with our tempers._ _

__It took a minute, but I calmed down. The silence was painful in my ears. It was two am, with no cars around, no pedestrians walking by, or lights on in any of the nearby apartments. The only evidence that we weren’t the last two people on earth was the sound of traffic on the highway in the distance, and even that was so low it could be mistaken for my feet shifting in the gravel as I adjusted my stance to lean away from him._ _

__Jean said, “It mattered to me. It took me years to come, I get that. But do you think I would have come at all if it didn’t matter to me? I didn’t know if you’d remember my name either. I was outside the bar for over an hour, with Connie trying to convince me to go in, because I couldn’t stand the thought that you wouldn’t know it was me or – or worse, if you did know it was me, and you ignored me. And that’s – that’s exactly what you did.”_ _

__Jean’s hands reached for me, moving through the air like they were moving through water because he didn’t know if I would slap them away. He placed them on my waist._ _

__“But once I was in there I couldn’t leave without at least talking to you. I knew if I left, it would take another five years for me to get the balls to do it again, and so I had to do something. I asked if you knew me. I wanted…I wanted to give you the chance to lie. I _knew_ you knew me, could see it all over your face. You looked like you were in pain the whole night. That’s why I asked you it that way. So you could tell me ‘no’ if you wanted, and I’d get the hint. I would have left.”_ _

__Jean pulled me into him, so that he could wrap his arms all the way around me. He wiped my face. I hadn’t even felt the tears come, and I wished he would have left them there so I didn’t have to know._ _

__“And to answer your question, I _do_ want you to want me, because I want you, and it would definitely _not_ be easy to never see you again, because now that I’m here I want to see you every day for as long as I possibly can.”_ _

__When he pressed his lips against my forehead, I slapped his shoulder, but it was as light as a breeze and he didn’t even react. “You’re an asshole.”_ _

__“I know.”_ _

__“This doesn’t fix everything.”_ _

__He sighed, and ran his fingers through my hair again. “I know.”_ _

__“It won’t – I won’t be able to forgive you for a really long time.”_ _

__“I know. I didn’t really expect you to.”_ _

__He held me for several more minutes, and I didn’t shove him away. Not because I couldn’t. I knew that if I pushed him away he’d let me go, but if I didn’t he’d probably hang on to me until the sun rose._ _

__I hated him for what he did to me, but I loved him for coming back. That was probably wrong. It was probably weak. It was probably disrespecting myself. It was probably undignified and shameful. But I could remember few times in my life that I had ever felt a grudge truly leave my body, and I collected grudges from anyone who had done the littlest crime to earn it. And even more than that, I could remember even fewer times in my life that Jean had ever been sorry for something. He had plenty of moments to be sorry for, not just times he’d wronged me, but anyone, and he never got like this._ _

__We were both out of our element. He wasn’t sure how to be sorry and I wasn’t sure how to forgive, but he was trying really hard to learn._ _

__I figured I should too._ _

__With both hands I clutched on to Jean’s collar, and gently tugged. Jean looked down, and I looked up. My fingers unfurled from his collar, and I placed them on either side of his face._ _

__I kissed him._ _

__And there was no other way to say it other than I kissed him all at once. My lips barely touched his, and we were pressed against the brick wall, tangled in each other’s hair and clothing, panting and biting and pulling, pulling, pulling each other closer when there was no more space between us. He lifted me off the ground, my legs wrapping around his waist as his hands slid under my ass. The brick dug into my back and so did his nails as he kissed me._ _

__He tore his lips from mine, even as I leaned in, chasing them. He panted. His eyes searched my expression, and I was sure I looked like a complete mess. “Am I getting a cab?”_ _

__I shook my head. It was too late for that, and he knew it. I was grateful he had asked anyway. But with us, it was all or nothing, and I had made my decision._ _

__Jean let my legs fall and set me back on my feet. I tugged him by his hand toward my car through the alley. He sat in the passenger seat, and while driving under the palm trees and the twinkling desert sky, I marveled at him more than anything. Jean Kirstein was in the passenger seat of my car._ _

__The outside world blurred. Of all the cars driving on that highway, all with someone in them –  
maybe two or three – all of them with some destination they were heading to, I knew that my car was the one God had his eye on tonight. _ _

__There was no other place I’d rather be. This morning was a vague, distant, memory I wasn’t even sure was real anymore. Jean was back in my life. All my other memories were dust kicked up behind the speeding wheels of my car._ _

__“One thing I don’t understand,” he said, as I drove. I turned the air-conditioning down so that it wasn’t blowing too loudly to hear him._ _

__“Hmmm?”_ _

__“You were supposed to get outta here. Right?”_ _

__I fidgeted in my seat, watching the road more closely than I really needed to. “I wanted to.”_ _

__“Do you not anymore?”_ _

__The truth was I never exactly wanted to leave Texas. I loved my home. I loved being close to Mexico, my parents’ home. I loved the heat, and that the sky was bluer here than anywhere else. I loved being able to walk into more or less any store, speak Spanish, and be understood by at least one other person._ _

__But I didn’t love the thoughts in people’s heads here and the beliefs in their prayers._ _

__“I had to choose,” I finally said, “Between going to school and transitioning. The whole point of leaving was to be somewhere no one would know I’m trans. So, I ended up staying.”_ _

__“You never went to school?”_ _

__I shook my head. “Still want to, someday. I’m still paying for my top surgery though. And hormone therapy too, of course.”_ _

__Jean smiled as I turned off the highway._ _

__“You’re so different now.”_ _

__“I look different. You’re the one that’s actually different, not me.”_ _

__He was quiet for a moment. His eyes turned red, then yellow, then green, as the stop light slowly gave us permission to move forward._ _

__“I’m different?”_ _

I snorted. “Uh, _yeah_. If someone had told me this morning that Jean Kirstein was gonna show up at the bar and apologize to me I would have hit them.” 

__“You would have done more than hit them.”_ _

__I laughed, because it was probably true._ _

__A couple minutes later we were at the front step to my apartment door. I unlocked it, and stepped inside. He followed behind me. I flicked on the light as Jean closed the door. I told him he didn’t have to take off his shoes. He did anyway, and set them side-by-side on my doormat. I kicked my own off and they landed somewhere in my living room._ _

__Once our shoes were off, there weren’t any more obvious actions that would take place before…_ _

__My hands shook, and I laced them behind my head._ _

__“Eren?”_ _

__“I’m fine,” I told him._ _

__“Look, I don’t want you to – I’m just saying, if all I take off tonight are my shoes, that’s fine.”_ _

__“No, that’s not it.” And it wasn’t. The reason I was shaking wasn’t because I didn’t want to rip his clothing off and fuck him right here in my hallway on the hardwood floor. “It’s just, I’ve only had one surgery.”_ _

__Jean’s eyebrows furrowed, creating the crease in his forehead, and I almost reached up to smooth it out. “I know that.”_ _

__“You do?”_ _

__“Yeah, or, I assumed you only had one, anyway.”_ _

__“And you uh…you don’t mind?”_ _

__Jean bit his lip, and he took my hands in his. The crease in his forehead deepened and his jaw clenched. He was trying to order the words in his mind in a way that wouldn’t offend me, but would also be honest. My heartbeat skipped._ _

__“Not enough,” he replied. “If I’m being honest, I’m already used to it. I’ve only had one boyfriend, ya’ know…since uh, since you. It’s – I’d rather be with you than some other guy that –” He groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know how to say it.”__

__His eyes plead with me not to be angry with him for his honesty, and I smiled. He did too, on accident I thought, because he was trying so hard not to fuck up._ _

__“Okay.” I blushed, and pulled my hands away from him. I was still too nervous to maul him, so I said, “Uh…I’m going to shower.”_ _

__I gestured to my clothes. At work I wore a smock, even though it looked stupid as hell on a bartender. I did it anyway though, because I wasn’t as graceful as my coworkers and generally ended up spilling at least one drink on myself throughout the night. But I didn’t wear one tonight, because I didn’t want to be wearing a fucking smock the first time he saw me after so long, and somehow spilling a margarita on myself was preferable._ _

__“Do you want me to leave?” he asked. I deadpanned at him, because there was no way he could have honestly thought that I had brought him all the way home to ask him to leave. Unless he thought he’d said something stupid, which he probably did think that. He saw my expression, and I didn’t miss his sigh of relief. “What do you want me to do while you shower?”_ _

Maybe it was then, that I realized that the universe had gone way out of its way to make this night happen, and to give Jean the opportunity to say sorry, and me the opportunity to forgive him, _for a reason_. Maybe the whole entire universe, and everyone in heaven, and God himself, wasn’t doing this just to fuck with me and see what would happen. Maybe I was supposed to take a Goddamn hint. 

__“Come with me,” I said, and reached for his hand._ _

__His eyebrows rose, but he didn’t argue with me as I guided him down the hall toward my bathroom._ _

__I flicked on the light, before opening the glass door. Turning on my shower, I dodged out of the way to avoid the crash of water against the porcelain._ _

__When I faced Jean, I kept his gaze as my hands curled underneath the hem of my stained V-neck. He wrapped his hands around my wrists to stop me, then he tugged the shirt up and off me himself. My shirt landed on the tile._ _

__Jean’s eyes drifted over my chest, and his hands came up to touch me. The same way he used to hold my breast, he laid his hand flat against my peck. His thumb trailed across my scar, fading now. It was just a shade darker brown than my skin, and given the natural dip underneath the muscle, in the right light, it wouldn’t look like there’d ever been an incision at all._ _

__Since getting my surgery, no one had touched me like this. I’d had boyfriends since him – not in high school, just in the last few years – but none after my surgery._ _

__It seemed appropriate, given that he was the first one to touch me shirtless, both before my surgery and after._ _

__He pulled his hands away from me to pull his own shirt off. We undressed the rest of the way together. I was shaking, but I found some comfort that he was nervous too. He had a way about him when he was nervous. A stiffness in his limbs, a wideness in his eyes, that crease in his forehead, and always clenching his jaw. He was clenching and unclenching his fists too, so I knew it was bad._ _

__I stepped into the shower. He followed._ _

__For the first few minutes, I showered as I always did. I washed my hair and conditioned it. I spread body wash all over myself, until suds were cloaking the tub floor._ _

__Jean got his hair wet, but other than that, he leaned against the shower wall and kept his eyes on me. Steam rose off our skin and clouded my vision of him, but his eyes smoldered through it all. They looked me up and down, lingering on different parts of me. When I ran out of places on my body to wash, I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to be confident and failing horribly. I wished the steam was thicker. I wished I could hide._ _

__As if he knew, Jean placed his hands on my waist, and pressed my back into the shower wall. He kissed me. The tension fell off his shoulders with the pellets of water. His body molded to mine, his limbs hot and coiled as he kissed my neck and trailed his fingers up and down my stomach, creating rivulets of water over my abs._ _

__His lips flowed down my chest, and he pressed his tongue against both my nipples and my scars. I shivered, curling my fingers in his hair. He kept going, his lips pressing so closely to me they dragged along my skin the whole way. He crouched in front of me on his knees, before he spread my thighs. My knees were so boneless I had to grip on to the shower door to stop myself from falling._ _

__His fingers stroked the insides of my thighs, and he looked up at me, tilting his head forward both to keep his eyes away from the falling water and to insinuate what he was about to do._ _

__“I uh…haven’t done this in a while so…” I could feel the warmth of his breath on me._ _

__“S’okay,” I choked, covering my mouth and trying to breathe normally._ _

Jean used his fingers to gently part my lips, and then he leaned in, pressing his mouth against me. I gasped into my hand as his tongue gently laved over my clit. His fingers slid inside of me, rotating, putting pressure on just the right spot. My body jolted. I tugged at his hair to keep myself standing and because I knew he liked it. I moaned as he kept going, and he sighed into me. His lips were so tender, malleable, and his tongue so _sweet_ , so _good_. The sensation was rising, taking me high with it. Jean pinned my hips to the shower wall as he sucked on me and moved his fingers in and out slowly. I cried his name like I was practicing a hymn and held on to his hair so I wouldn’t float away. As I came, I tightened around him, throbbing. He too, moaned with his mouth still pressed against me before pulling away. 

__He stood. My hands were on him, tugging him toward me, so I could kiss him and taste myself on him. While kissing me, he blindly spread his hand against the shower wall, searching for the handle to turn it off. The water dribbled from the shower head as we stepped out._ _

__We didn’t even dry off._ _

__We went straight into my bedroom, not even bothering to turn the light on first. We collapsed on to my bed, him on top of me, with my legs wrapped around him. My hand scrambled to swing open my nightstand drawer and shuffle through all the shit in there. I was searching for a condom, but Jean’s body froze over top of me when he saw something else._ _

__“What?” I was breathing in more air than I could exhale it seemed. My hands were gripping on to him. My nails left half-moons in his skin._ _

__Jean reached into my drawer. He grabbed a condom, lube, and my strap-on._ _

__“You don’t mind?” he asked._ _

My mouth had gone dry and all that excess air I’d been breathing in a moment ago had been vacuumed out of my lungs. I’d topped my last two boyfriends, and no one else. Not once tonight had I even considered topping him. How the _fuck_ could I mind that? 

__“Sure,” I whispered, almost stuttering. He kissed me and rolled off of me onto his back. I scooted off the bed, pulling it onto me the way I did my boxers. Jean watched as I adjusted the strap-on to fit over my waist, and tightened the straps. I rolled the condom on over it. It took me several minutes longer than it would have, because my hands were trembling and sweaty. Jean had had to take the condom from me and open it because my own fingers couldn’t find friction._ _

__With that taken care of, I sat back on my bed. It was my turn to part his thighs. My hands explored his body, illuminated blue by the moonlight seeping through my curtains. I traced the dips in his stomach and ran my hand through his chest hair and happy trail. He closed his eyes, crossing his arms behind his head on my pillow. He sighed. It took all the strength I had to pull my hands off of him._ _

__I coated my fingers in lube, and as I prepped him, I kissed his body as he had me. My teeth sunk into his thighs, leaving little blemished bits of me on his skin. The bite marks tracked up and down his legs like footprints on a path. The longer I did this, the more my fingers stretched him and paid special attention to his sweet spot, the more his body writhed. I watched, hypnotized by the way his muscles rippled and tightened because of my fingers._ _

__“Come on, Eren,” he breathed, “Please?”_ _

__I shuddered. “Yeah, okay.”_ _

__I spread his legs wider and eased myself over top of him, thinking of all the times he’d done this to me when we were young. It was surreal, seeing him beneath me, being in this position instead of the other way around. His eyes weren’t wide the way mine were. They were half-lidded, dazed, as I pressed inside of him with the strap-on._ _

__Jean’s legs hitched up my sides. His arms wrapped around my shoulders. He gripped on to me for support. I kissed him until he told me he was ready._ _

I began to thrust into him, as slowly as he needed it. Our hands were mapping each other out, relearning our bodies. We remembered through the pads of our fingers what made the other feel good, what made him feel loved. When Jean didn’t have his mouth on my ears, he was telling me how good _I_ felt. How badly he needed _my_ cock, and as dirty as it would sound to anyone else, it didn’t to me and he knew that. He was doing this to respect me, to make sex for me what I had always wanted it to be, needed it to be, and I became so emotional while kissing him he had to wipe away my tears. He looked like he was going to ask me if I was okay, or if I wanted to stop, so I placed my thumb over his lips. 

As he whispered _right there, right there_ into my ear, I pushed his legs backward so that I could go deeper and harder. He whimpered and reached down to touch himself, but I pulled his hand away and laced our fingers together. He whined, and his grip tightened to the point where his beautiful knuckles went pale. 

__“Why?” he gasped._ _

__I grinned, kissing him and biting his lip. “Be patient.”_ _

__I sped my thrusting, feeling his hardness graze my stomach. I shivered. He looked so sexy underneath me. His stomach was taut, his length was wet, and he was blushing from his cheeks down to his chest. It made me want to take my time with him, and I could._ _

__Unlike what would happen to other men, there was no pacing. There was no holding back, or training my mind elsewhere. I didn’t have to pray he was close or use my hand to make sure he got off. I could keep this up for as long as he needed._ _

__I rocked into him until our skin was slippery with sweat and all my bones and joints were pleasantly aching. The sun rose, making his skin glow. The gold in his irises puddled before his eyes pinched up. He gnawed at his swollen lips._ _

__He begged me to let him come, begged me to fuck him harder, and I did. He threw his head back and his spine arched. My knuckles were pinched between his. He told me again how good I felt deep inside of him, and I crushed my lips against his just in time. He came. A moan escaped me at the feeling of his release hot against my stomach._ _

__When he was no longer panting, and we were both kissing deeply, he tilted his head back to look into my eyes. He threaded his fingers through my hair, and I pulled his hand to my lips so I could kiss each individual knuckle._ _

__“You know, I lived without you for so long, and I always told myself that if I could live without you, then I must not love you,” he whispered._ _

__I picked up his other hand to kiss the knuckles on that one. He watched, but his eyes weren’t on me, they were on his memories._ _

__“So, you don’t love me?”_ _

__He shook his head. “I was getting to that. I realize now, that I could live without you. If I hadn’t come to the bar tonight, or if you had ignored me, I could have lived without you. I have for a while. But now I’m wondering how I did, because living without you is no way to live.”_ _

__I grinned, and eased the strap-on out of him. He winced. His hips were going to be sore tomorrow._ _

__“I don’t want you in my life because I can’t live without you,” he continued, “but I definitely never want to live without you again. And I think it’s because I actually do love you.”_ _

__“You think?” I teased, as I loosened all the stupid straps and tossed the thing on the floor, not even bothering to roll the condom off of it yet._ _

__His eyes zeroed in on me, hardening and darkening despite the sunlight turning my room shades of pink. “Yeah, I think I do.”_ _

__“Wait – really?”_ _

__He nodded, and then looked away from me, wearing the crease in his forehead. “S’okay if you can’t say the same. I get it.”_ _

__I snorted, and Jean whipped his head in my direction. I was sitting cross-legged on the bed, and I scooted so that I was facing him. I bent my head down to kiss him. “I never stopped.”_ _

__“You sure?” he asked, so genuinely worried that it was endearing. My thumb smoothed out the crease in his forehead._ _

__“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”_ _

__He smiled then, sitting up in bed just long enough to tackle me into the sheets and get on top of me again. We were so high on each other’s skin that we couldn’t fall asleep right away. We held on to each other. My thumbs were stroking his knuckles, and his lips were kissing me breathless. We could feel our heartbeats, thudding behind our skin, muscle, and ribs._ _

__“This is what I should have done the night you told me,” he whispered. “I should have never –”_ _

__I placed my thumb against his lips again, silencing him. His brow furrowed, but when he looked into my eyes, he understood. He wasn’t allowed to apologize anymore, or dwell on it, or regret it._ _

__Right now, he was in my arms. He loved me the way I was. That was more than I had ever imagined and it was more than enough._ _

__We fell asleep together, like we always used to when we were young: Sprawled out across the entire bed, our limbs stretched in every direction and the comforter weaving around us and between us. Except one of us always had at least one hand on the other, so that we could reassure each other that we had not left him, without ever opening our eyes._ _

**Author's Note:**

> I've noticed that this is my third fic that ends with two spent, sweaty, sleepy boys in love.
> 
> What can I say, I just really like the AUs where they're going to be okay.


End file.
